A man, a plan

The five-point plan featured in Mr. Romney's acceptance speech tonight has one point I'm fuzzy about (the trade agreements) and four that are persuasive. That is, they are within the reasonable competency of a Congress working with a White House, unlike, say, a plan to lower the oceans. They are likely to produce the results claimed, unlike, say, quantitative easement and stimulus spending on public projects. And they are unlikely to be attempted by the present administration. i score that a win:

And unlike the president, I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs. It has 5 steps.

First, by 2020, North America will be energy independent by taking full advantage of our oil and coal and gas and nuclear and renewables.

Second, we will give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow. When it comes to the school your child will attend, every parent should have a choice, and every child should have a chance.

Third, we will make trade work for America by forging new trade agreements. And when nations cheat in trade, there will be unmistakable consequences.

Fourth, to assure every entrepreneur and every job creator that their investments in America will not vanish as have those in Greece, we will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.

And fifth, we will champion small businesses, America’s engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.

21 comments:

I'd have to do a little research to back up a faded memory, but I'd suspect he's leaning towards making access to our markets contingent on the reciprocity of our trading partners. Hoops to be cleared such as signing agreements for access to technology and/or local manufacturing rights, import levies, WTO judgments and such.

That's just a WAG off the top of a dusty old neural net. A brief search via the way-back mocheen should either support or render inert the WAG, but it's past my bed time.

Technically, that's more an outline of what a plan might look like than an actual plan. E.g., "We will cut the deficit" -- how precisely? "We will give our fellow citizens the skills they need" -- only the ones we're already funding via public education, or are you talking about retraining budgets? By the way, what are the skills that the "careers of tomorrow" will need? How would we know?

Some of the points are achievable, but maybe via several different approaches. Only the fifth point is fleshed out enough to have a real idea of what he means by it.

In a sense this is self-protection; it leaves open any road that might get to something like success on the point. And since he doesn't know what kind of Congress he would be dealing with if elected, there's a sensible element to that.

On "new trade agreements," like you, I think that's fuzzy; we already have substantial trade agreements. It's not like in the 1980s when we weren't trading with the Soviet Union or China in a big way. There aren't a lot of new markets to open, and although there are some emerging markets, they tend to be a drag on our manufacturing base rather than a market for us if we free trade with them -- at least, until they develop enough wealth to buy luxury goods. America still sells Coca-Cola to the world, and we sell F-35 fighter jets; but these are luxury goods.

Emerging markets in the Middle East, meanwhile, will be undercut by the first point to some degree. A general decline in the price of energy, and especially in oil specifically, will damage the emergence of, say, Iraq as a trading partner. So to some degree the points are incompatible.

I think he's talking about the Chinese, so bthun's point is a good one. Although, it could just be a generality--And I do seem to remember that there was a trade agreement with Colombia that passed under Obama, despite the apparent disinterest of his administration.

I do not count the middle east as important new trading partners--I would actually look to both South America and West Africa as new ground.

And forget "manufacturing" in the 1950's sense as a prime mover. That's over and done with.

Well, right. But manufacturing in the 20-teens sense is still important. The US has an edge here in only two places: in places where we are talking about luxury goods, and in places where we are talking about goods that can be entirely manufactured automatically. Our competitors in the first market are, chiefly, the Germans and the Japanese; in the second, the Japanese especially.

In theory, though, we're about to see a lot of industries move into the "fully automated" mode. That means a potential explosion of manufacture -- and at the small-business level, because the costs are appropriate to that scale, and because what will really differentiate your product is the individual ingenuity you put into it. An AR-15 is a Colt product, but I can print a receiver with a special modification I happened to think of for about $30.

I'm pretty sure Romney won't carry out this plan perfectly. I'm also confident whatever he does will be an improvement over what we'll get in a second Obama administration, which will be (1) stifling energy production, (2) obstructing vouchers, (3) neglecting to negotiate any trade agreements, (4) exploding the deficit (OK, that one may be a draw), and (5) drowning small businesses in taxes and regulation, notably including Obamacare.

As for me, I find that I like the VPs better than the Presidential candidates on both tickets. So take heart! There's always the chance of a resignation.

There's also a chance that Romney might be a better President than I expect him to be, should he win. Of course, since we are dealing with the unknown, there's the same chance that he could be a worse one.

The only thing I'm fuzzy on concerning the free trade agreement rates are the data offered to support the claim. "Fifteen free trade agreements" negotiated by the PRC? No. Fifteen trade agreements. There's nothing "free" about them, at least with respect to the Asian trading "partners" and Iran.

"Second, we will give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow."

We cannot give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow. We can provide the opportunity to get these skills. But they have to want to put in the work to take advantage of that opportunity. If they would rather just do what minimum is necessary to maintain eligibility so that they can play on the football team in high school, or coast through college earning a degree in "African-American Studies" or "Women and Religious Studies" then there's not a lot we can do for them.

I'm a Scout leader. I swear, sometimes it's all I can do to keep my mouth shut when the parents of some kid who is struggling in school but is making every practice and game tells me "We let him play sports because it's the only thing in school he likes."

By the way, what are the skills that the "careers of tomorrow" will need? How would we know?

Math. Science. English - where you actually learn to read and explain what you read with simple declarative sentences, over and over again until you can actually do it. History, especially American History with an emphasis on what we've done right equal to that of what we've done wrong.

There's other stuff that's important as well. Every kid should have some education in music. I'd love to see every H.S. kid have at least one semester of formal logic.

But here's the thing - no sports, no extracurricular stuff unless you are carrying at least a "C" average. If you're not, you need to take that time to study. Mom, Dad - you'd be amazed on how much time your kid will have to learn if you never buy him or her a video game machine or a cell phone. Oh, God yes, they'll whine and cry. Suck it up and be a parent, not some craven fool like the "parents" you see on TV.

Here's the thing with education and careers, folks. I work in a highly technical field. I don't expect people coming in to know all the details of this technology. No problem. We'll teach them. But what we do need are people who will show up on time, sober, who can read and write well and express themselves in standard English, have the basic grounding in math and science that the kinds of topics we will introduce them to will not be complete gibberish to them - and who are willing and able to put the time and effort in to learn what they need to know.

Vouchers won't solve the problem of how to train kids in flexible, effective ways, but it will allow parents to move their kids to whatever school seems best able to train them. The parents still will have to make intelligent choices -- something no amount of perfect government will ever relieve them of doing.

That doesn't mean that they all represent the same chance or equal risks. We have information that helps us evaluate relative risks.

Yes, but here we're talking specifically about estimating chances once I've discarded all my usual predictive material. Once you've discarded your information, you're left with blind chance; and in that realm, your predictive capacity is limited to 'either it will happen, or it won't.'

You propose to avoid despair by discarding all the information available to you? That may help you avoid mortal sin, but it's not going to make you a good voter.

You don't think you're being just a teeny bit princess-and-the-pea about this? It's not the first time American citizens have been confronted with unappetizing choices at the ballot box. Don't we still have an obligation to face the facts and make the most informed choices we can?

If you want any hope out of this bunch, it largely comes from ignoring everything you know about them and hoping for the best in spite of what you know. Ultimately, I just hope that Romney and his machine turn out to be totally different from (in the sense of 'better than') what I expect them to be if he is elected.

But I don't think you have a better choice on the other side. The only advantage to Team Obama is that they're guaranteed gone in four years. So, you know, I can hope for a resignation or a miracle, which may be the same thing; and there's nothing wrong with avoiding despair by hoping for miracles.

"Don't we still have an obligation to face the facts and make the most informed choices we can?"

Each and every day...

The focus on the top of the ticket is all well and good, but I truly hope the post election Congress tacks hard a starboard too. Without the electorate's political pendulum swinging back to the right there will be little [un]doing in the halls of gub'ment and we, the plebeians, will all be rid hard(er) and put up wet(ter).